Survey conducted using Standard Empathy Instrument (Quantitative) version 2.5, n = 577.
In light of the perhaps-surprising results of the initial survey, we attempted to repeat the survey to investigate whether the initial results were anomalous. Regrettably, nearly all the honey badgers had engaged themselves in other activities (seeking honey and larvae, hunting and eating cobras, digging, running backwards in slow motion, etc.) and were unavailable for questioning.
The second survey (n = 12) confirmed the initial results, although several study participants showed worrisome flat affect possibly due to snake venom exposure.
Most of you have seen the video about the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, with narration by Randall, somewhere in your travels around the internet. I delight in using the honey badgers to teach about crisis hotlines; we’re using the honey badger in our initial training to talk about inappropriate sexual callers, frequent callers, the virtues of directness, etc.
Today I’d like to talk about language. At one point, Randall says “Oh, the honey badgers are just crazy!”. There could hardly be any moment more germane to start our discussion of pathologizing language.
What is pathologizing language?
I’m thrilled that you asked. It’s judgmental language that examines someone’s behavior and ascribes a pathological cause to it. In plainer English, pathologizing language assumes that others are the way they are because they’re sick, and (by inference) makes the sickness seem like the most important thing about the person.
“The honey badgers are just crazy!” labels the honey badger with a mental illness and basically says that you don’t need to know anything else about them–they’re just crazy; what else is there to know? It’s a label that puts the honey badger in a box and assumes that we, the outside observers, are capable of knowing exactly what is going on for the honey badger and why it behaves the way it does.
We might just as fairly say that honey badgers are highly adapted predators with little fear of pain. They’re courageous and resourceful, fierce and dangerous. They’re really good at doing what comes naturally for them: being total badass predators you would not want to meet in a dark alley.
But that’s not the same as being crazy. When we call them crazy, we’re using a stigmatizing term from our experience that makes their natural behavior (badass predator mode) seem like an illness or like there’s something wrong with them. That’s pathologizing language.
Examples of pathologizing language
People often use pathologizing language as part of an ad hominem attack designed to undermine a person’s credibility or standing. By associating another person with something we find undesirable or sick, we subtly damage the other person. Often we include minimizers like “just” or “only” to help the knife sink even deeper.
“She’s just a crazy person”
“Yeah, he’s an alcoholic, what do you expect?”
“Oh, she’s PMSing again, it’s always like this around this time of the month”
“Stop acting so gay”
“Just another entitled homeschooler”
“You’re just suicidal”
“Of course he has health problems… he’s fat”
“I mean, she’s an engineer. Why were you expecting empathy?”
“She’s such a drama queen”
“We got another whiny schizophrenic on line 2”
In each case, we’re applying a label and using it to minimize and disrespect how the other person is feeling. We also make it seem as though the person’s behaviors and feelings are due to some problem that we’ve identified. We’re assuming that we know why the person is doing what they do, and are therefore writing it off. That’s the real problem with pathologizing language: it covers up disrespect and allows us to pigeonhole people and forget about them.
What if there really is a problem we need to discuss?
Non-pathologized honey badger (c) Hollis Easter
Sometimes we still have to talk about stuff, and sometimes people really do have mental illnesses, suffer from addictions, or behave in ways that society has decided are inappropriate. When that’s the case, use non-pathologizing language wherever possible.
What’s non-pathologizing language? It’s not making assumptions about what causes a person’s behavior, not pigeonholing them, and not claiming that you can know everything about a person just because you know some labels for them.
This can be subtle; here are some examples:
The honey badgers are just crazy. (pathologizing and belittling)
The honey badgers are mentally ill. (pathologizing; defines what the HBs are)
The honey badgers have mental illnesses. (less pathologizing; reports the fact but not as the only thing about them)
The honey badgers are living with mental illness. (less pathologizing; reports the fact but draws attention away from it)
The honey badgers suffer from compulsive behaviors. (even less pathologizing; reports what they do, in a compassionate way)
The honey badgers hunt cobras even when they aren’t hungry, and they seem unable to stop. (even less pathologizing; focuses almost totally on what they do.)
More?
Mrs Honey Badger is PMSing again. (pathologizing)
Mrs Honey Badger seems very angry today. (non-pathologizing)
I wish Mr Honey Badger would stop acting gay all the time. (pathologizing)
I get confused and uncomfortable when I see Mr Honey Badger looking for new cobra recipes in cooking magazines. (non-pathologizing; gets at the root of the speaker’s concern)
We could go on, but in general:
Describe what you see, not what you think it means. If someone is talking to people who aren’t visible to you, say that–there’s no need to say it’s because they’re crazy or because they’re schizophrenic.
Talk about behavior, not what you think caused it.
Beware of using language that minimizes other people’s experiences or encourages them to be silent.
Recognize that what you think is aberrant and sick may just be normal behavior for other people. Stay open to that possibility.
The honey badgers get sad when people call them crazy. They’re just trying to be themselves, working their way through a confusing and changing world that’s full of cobras and jackals that steal their mice and call them stupid.
Before you read the rest of this, watch this video of a Russian mouse with a great attitude:
That mouse would be a failure in most schools.
Unless they’re using something like standards-based grading (SBG) that allows students to reassess skills that they didn’t ace the first time, most schools and universities don’t value performance that’s preceded by failure. We expect excellence the first time, we select for it, and we punish people who don’t measure up. So even though the mouse eventually got the biscuit, it doesn’t matter because it’s only the first attempt that counts.
Sadly, that mouse would also be a failure in most workplaces.
Unless they’re unusually progressive, most offices expect 100% success from employees and have little tolerance for failure. We expect external failures—places where the outside circumstances didn’t go our way—but have no room for internal failure. Even if it’s a new project that nobody’s ever done before, we expect wins and punish losses. Failing at a task is dangerously close to being a failure, and nobody wants to be a failure.
This leads to risk aversion. Most of us wouldn’t bother even trying to steal the cookie, because it looks too hard and the probability of failure is pretty high. The costs of failure are huge. The costs of not even trying are pretty low. So we don’t try.
But what happens when you watch the mouse?
You want it to succeed. It’s agonizingly close to getting the biscuit, but then it gives up. Apparently. Or maybe it’s just sitting there on top of the shelf, looking at things from a new angle. After a protracted space of time spent motionless, the mouse jumps back down, grabs the cookie, and nails it on the first try. It learned something from those initial failures and it succeeded in the end.
Thoughts
Why do we care so much about initial success? Why do we give it so much weight in our estimation of value? The fixation isn’t universal—everyone knows that you have to throw a lot of basketballs, play a lot of scales, and draw a lot of stick figures before you get very good at sports, music, or art—but it’s still prominent.
Think of five things in your life that you do really well. Could be part of your profession (counseling people in pain, calculating amortization, making proper Hollandaise sauce, driving an 18-wheeler, writing a grant proposal) or part of your home life (getting out stains, changing diapers, making dinner, fixing clogged toilets, hosting parties) or something to do with a hobby (throwing bullseyes in darts, climbing mountains, making beaded necklaces, making great beer, skiing black diamonds) or whatever else comes to mind.
How many of those five things did you do really well from the beginning? Did you have initial success in any of them? I didn’t. I got in trouble for not practicing music, was told that I couldn’t draw, was called ungraceful and fat and ugly and not welcome in dance class, burned my first attempt at chocolate sauce, fell on my face when trying to skate, accidentally erased some important computer disks back when 5.25″ floppies were the norm… you get the idea. Not a lot of initial success for me.
How many of us are still seeing the first person we ever kissed? Doing the first career we tried?
I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers last night, and he talks a lot about how most truly excellent practitioners are people who received a ton of opportunity for practice early on—they got a chance to earn their 10,000 hours of practice on the way to expertise. It’s an excellent point, and the thing I want to add is this: most of the outliers he talks about failed at things. A lot. They just had the opportunity to keep trying without being punished for it.
They were mice that had a chance to practice long enough to get the biscuit.
Goals
Let’s start by trying to notice the places in life where we fall into the initial success model. There are spots where we afford equal weight to later successes, and there are spots where initial success is so important that we shouldn’t change our habits (as the saying goes, “if at first you don’t succeed, don’t take up skydiving”).
But I wonder how things would change if we adopted more of a growth mindset and looked more at the outcomes and less at the path and time it took to reach them.
I’ve long believed that the truest measure of a teacher comes not from their star students but from their middling ones. The really good students—the ones who succeed on their first try—probably will do pretty well with any teacher. But the middle ones require more help before they get it, so they’re a better way of seeing how well a teacher teaches. They’re the mice that fell a bunch of times but still got there.
Next time you’re teaching, try to look for the future cookie-robbing rock star mice inside your students, and see whether you can let go of initial success long enough to help them find the goal a little later. As with so many things, after a while “who got there first?” stops feeling so important, and what really matters is what we do once we all arrive.
People use savings accounts for the wrong thing, and it hurts them.
Every bank I’ve seen has savings accounts, and they all come with snazzy logos and slogans like “Watch your savings grow with HSBC!” or “It all starts with saving today” or whatever. The banks pretty much say that if you sock money away into savings accounts, you’ll be rich somewhere down the line. The problem is that it isn’t true. Far from being get-rich quick schemes, savings accounts, used badly, are basically guaranteed to help you get poor slowly.
A savings account is a really safe bet. It’s one of the few places where you can store money and be legally guaranteed to get it all back at the end. The only problem is that the money from the savings account isn’t worth as much when you get it back.
Wait, what? That doesn’t make any sense at all! If you got all the money back, how is it less valuable?
Because inflation–the tendency of prices to rise over time–means that the buying power of your money fades away unless it grows faster than prices are going up. Unless your savings account reliably pays a higher-than-inflation interest rate, which almost none of them do, you’re losing money over time. That’s a problem if you’re thinking of a savings account as a way to grow your money.
I’d like to encourage you to think about savings accounts differently. They have a place, but they aren’t about growing your wealth. Savings accounts are for protecting money you might need to access quickly someday, not getting more money. Think of your savings account as an insurance policy, not an investment, and you’ll be on solid ground.
Are your eyes glazing over? Don’t worry! People use lots of abstract words to talk about money, and I think it confuses things and makes normal people throw their hands up and just continue making poor choices because it all feels too complex and hard to understand. So I’m going to try to use plain English as much as possible, with concrete examples and drawings on index cards!
What savings accounts are not
What savings accounts are not (c) Hollis Easter
Savings accounts mostly don’t grow in value over time. I want to be able to talk about a couple of concepts here, so let’s define some terms.
Value is a measure of what I can do with some money: if I want to buy a new set of bagpipes or have someone repair my furnace, I need enough value that someone is willing to trade their stuff for my value.
Dollars are units of US currency. They’re related to value, but they aren’t the same, because a given number of dollars won’t always buy you the same amount of stuff. Think about how Red Sox tickets cost a lot more during the World Series than during pre-season, or about how gas used to cost $0.85 per gallon and now costs $3.92.
Inflation is a name for the observed trend that, as time passes, you need more dollars in order to reach a certain amount of value. When I bought my first cup of coffee, it was less than a dollar; now, a cup of coffee from the same store costs $2.25. That’s inflation.
Back at the top of this section, I said that savings accounts mostly don’t grow in value over time. What I mean is that although the number of dollars in your savings account will grow over time, it won’t grow as fast as inflation, and that means that the value of your money–what you can do with it–tends to shrink over time.
Want some proof?
If you’re bored by numbers, skip this section. Otherwise, read on.
You can look up historical US inflation rates at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Inflation Calculator and use it to calculate annual inflation. What they call “buying power” is what I’m calling value.
I’ll go year by year, since that makes the inflation easier to see and ties nicely into the discussion about interest rates that we’re going to have in a moment. Imagine that you’ve taken $1000, stuck it under a mattress, then come back the next year to buy something with it. Unfortunately, all the prices are higher now.
2007: You’d need $1028.48 to buy what used to cost $1000. (2.84% inflation).
2008: You’d need $1038.40 to buy what used to cost $1000. (3.84% inflation).
2009: You’d need $996.44 to buy what used to cost $1000. (-0.36% inflation). This was the big crash year.
2010: You’d need $1016.40 to buy what used to cost $1000. (1.64% inflation).
2011: You’d need $1031.57 to buy what used to cost $1000. (3.16% inflation).
2012: You’d need $1020.69 to buy what used to cost $1000. (2.07% inflation).
2013: You’d need $1019.84 to buy what used to cost $1000. (1.98% inflation).
That’s what I mean when I say your money loses value over time. Unless your number of dollars grows faster than inflation, your money buys less later on.
But what about interest?
Good question. Most banks offer interest on their savings accounts, which entices you to put in more money. Think of interest rates as advertising tactics; they’re tools for convincing you to put money in the bank (which will then make it grow for itself by investing it other ways). Earning interest on accounts is good, but you’ll notice that banks almost never offer rates that beat inflation. Here’s a quick survey of some banks I know, ranked from highest to lowest:
2012-2013 inflation rate: 1.98% (banks have to beat this to beat inflation)
Capital One 360 Savings: 0.75%
First Niagara Pinnacle Money Market: 0.2%
Citibank Savings Plus: 0.15%
HSBC Premier Savings: 0.15%
HSBC Advance Online Savings: 0.05%
Commerce Bank myRewards Savings: 0.03%
Key Bank Personal Saver: 0.02%
First Niagara Statement Savings: 0.01%
You’ll notice that all the banks offer way less interest than what it would take to beat inflation. Some of them are just ridiculous!
The best of the ones I listed (Capital One 360 Savings) would earn you $7.50 on your $1000 savings in one year, which means you lose $12.34 in value because of inflation. The worst of them (First Niagara Statement Savings) will pay you a whopping ten cents on your $1000. At that rate, if you wanted to buy yourself a cup of Starbucks coffee ($2.75) with your annual interest earnings, you’d have to put $27,500 in the bank for a year!
Turning back to inflation, the bigger problem is that your $1000 is now worth a lot less. Remember that you need $1019.84 in 2013 to buy what $1000 would have bought in 2012. So even if you’ve got that sweet Capital One 360 account, you still only have $1007.50 and you need $1019.84, so you’ve got to come up with that extra $12.34 out of your pocket if you want to buy something. And we aren’t even talking about taxes on the interest yet!
Interest rates are marketing and advertising tools designed to convince you to lend your money (they’ll call it ‘deposit’ or ‘save’) to a particular bank. The banks can have lots of reasons for wanting to do that, but basically it comes down to cash flow: they’ll take your money, lend it to other people, invest it to make more money, or hold onto it to secure their own debts. They’ll pay you a little bit (the interest) for letting them hang onto your money, but unless they’re paying you a rate higher than inflation, your money isn’t growing.
Hiring yourself some guards
I’ve been talking a lot about how savings accounts are unhelpful for making your money grow, and you might be wondering: “what’s the point of having a savings account at all?”. Savings accounts are great tools for making sure that you have access to your money, immediately, whenever you need it. In financial terms, they have very high security (your money is guaranteed to be there) and liquidity (you can have it immediately just by asking).
Savings accounts are for your emergency fund: the money you’ll need immediately if you lose your job, your house has a catastrophe, or someone in your family has an accident and needs immediately medical care. When these things happen, you need the money to be there, and you need it to be there Right Now.
You don’t want to keep the money in your house: someone could break in and steal it, or your house could burn down, or a tornado might carry it away. You want something more secure, so you decide to hire some guards to look after your emergency fund.
You head down to Top Hat National Bank and make an agreement with the banker: he agrees to protect your money 24/7, guaranteeing that he will give it back to you whenever you ask. He takes your money and puts it in the savings account, which is guarded night and day by hulking Myrmidons in suits of armor.
Hiring some guards (c) Hollis Easter
This is fantastic! Totally secure, and now your emergency fund is really safe. Mr Top Hat wants to be paid something for his efforts–all those guards want a paycheck too–but you’re happy to pay it because you value being able to trust that your money is safe and immediately available, forever.
You feel even safer knowing that Mr Top Hat’s promises are backed by the full faith and credit of the US federal government thanks to FDIC and NCUSIF/NCUA–the insurance policies that banks and credit unions have to buy before they’re allowed to guard your money.
So you choose the savings account because, even though its low interest rate means losing ground to inflation every year, the advantages outweigh the costs. You’re basically buying an insurance policy against catastrophic loss, and you’re paying for it by losing a little money to inflation.
This has nothing to do with investing or growth. The purpose of the savings account is to protect a portion of your money so that it will always be there when you need it, no matter what.
What savings accounts are (c) Hollis Easter
The bottom line
You’ve probably noticed that the only difference relates to your intentions.
If you’re saving money because you want it to grow, you’re going to be disappointed by a savings account. You’re using the wrong tool for the job; you’ll need to look into investing in things like stocks or bonds if you want to end up with substantially more money than you started with. Inflation matters here.
If you’re saving money because you want to protect it and make sure it’s there in an emergency, a savings account is an excellent choice. You’re willing to pay the Myrmidons to guard your cash, and the insurance they provide is valuable to you. This is a great way to secure your emergency fund. You don’t care about inflation here; you care about security.
I’m not saying that you should stop using savings accounts–far from it! Some of your money should always be in savings, for the emergency fund we talked about. Folks differ about how much money they want to have in emergency funds, but most people say anywhere from two weeks to a year of living expenses. That’s money that you really can’t afford to lose, so it goes into a savings account.
Once you’ve got that amount safely stocked away and guarded by the metaphorical Marines in Fort Top Hat, then it’s time to think about investing some of your money to make it grow. Savings accounts are the wrong route for this money–you need investment.
Any questions? Please leave a comment! If this was helpful, please share it with your friends!
Savings accounts summary (c) Hollis Easter
Disclaimer: I’m thinking about systems here, and that leads to some hand-waving that’s a little confusing about who’s getting paid what. The bankers aren’t getting paid by inflation, exactly, so it’s not accurate to imply that the banks are getting rich directly because your money isn’t keeping pace with inflation. However, I’m in the metaphors business, and the guards needing to be paid is a much more useful metaphor than the degree to which the returns offered you by the bankers based on the investments they’re making with your lent capital are keeping up with rising consumer prices and losses to tax.
The point here is that I’m trying to help you see savings accounts in a different light, which I hope this framing achieves. Also, I encourage you to read and think about this stuff on your own, but I am not a financial advisor and don’t know your situation, so I can’t guarantee any particular outcome for you. That should take care of the legal disclaimer fine print, eh?
Fears In A Hat is a good introductory team-building and group process exercise that gets people focused on good listening, encourages them to share vulnerability and build trust, promotes empathy for callers, and starts the process of forming groups and high-performing teams. It takes 20-60 minutes depending on group size and direction; it’s flexible enough to be taken in many directions.
I’ve been developing and adapting Fears In A Hat for a lot of years. It started as a team-building exercise that (I think) came to me from Coreen Bohl, and I’ve been shaping it into a crisis hotline facilitation activity ever since. At Reachout, we usually do Fears In A Hat at the end of our first hour of training, when new recruits are beginning to get to know each other and it’s time to encourage them to trust and open up a little more.
You can facilitate Fears In A Hat in lots of different directions; its simplicity and directness are part of its strength. It’s quick, cheap, and easy to set up. Trainees love it, too–most groups ask to do it again later in the training program.
We use it for talking about scary stuff in the past, but you could also use it in a classroom to get people talking about their fears of the subject (“What’s your biggest fear about math class?”), flip it to talk about hopes (“What are you desperately hoping to learn here?) or successes (“What are you most proud of achieving?”, “What do you wish everyone here appreciated about you?”). It’s a versatile exercise.
Structure and flow
Here’s what a typical Fears In A Hat session at Reachout’s Training Weekend might look like. I usually start it after a bunch of icebreakers, once the group has started to loosen up, and it’s the last thing we do before a break.
Hollis: We’ve been talking a lot about communication styles, and I’m really encouraged by how you’re all thinking carefully and paying attention. That’s great, and I hope you’ll keep it up as the weekend progresses. But I’d like you to think about feelings, too. How do you think it feels to call a crisis hotline?
Trainees: [usually say something like “uncomfortable” or “scary” or “worried”]
Hollis: Yeah! It’s hard work to call people you don’t even know and ask them for help. We’ve talked about unconditional positive regard, but the callers also deserve our respect–asking for help like this isn’t always easy. Does that make sense?
Trainees: [“Yes”, “yeah”, “mmhmm”]
Hollis: It’s really important that we respect them for asking, and I’d like you to really imagine what they’re going through when they pick up the phone. To help you do that, we’re going to do another exercise right now–it’s called Fears In A Hat. I’ll pass around some index cards–would you all take one?
[Hollis passes around the index cards and waits until everyone has one]
Hollis: Okay. I’d like you to think for a moment about your own life, and think back to something that you’d feel really ashamed to have other people know was true about you. Maybe it’s something you did, or something that happened to you, or something you thought, or whatever… but think back until you’ve got something that would be really scary to share with others.
Hollis: Everyone got one? Good. So here’s my challenge for you. Write it down on your card. I’m going to do it too. I want to give you a chance to feel what it’s like to open up about something personal, and I also want you to feel what it’s like to be heard and valued without judgment. I want this to be anonymous, so please don’t write your name down. Just write your scary thing on the card, fold it in half once, and put it into the hat on the floor in the middle of our circle. Once everyone does that, I’ll shuffle them and read them out loud. Before we get there, we’ll talk a bit about how you’d like me to read them and what we can do as a group to support everyone.
Hollis: If that feels too hard, you’re welcome to make something up instead of using something that’s true. If you do that, please try to make it something reasonable–but I really encourage you to try writing something about yourself. We’ll do our best to support you–give it a chance. Once we’re done, I’ll tear up all the cards. Any questions?
Trainees: [nothing]
Hollis: Oh, and my eyesight isn’t perfect, so please write legibly, okay? [Trainees usually laugh.] Okay. Let’s all write.
[Time passes. Once everyone’s done writing, Hollis gathers the cards from the hat.]
Trainees: [usually someone says “I want my card back!” or “I feel scared!”. If not, I lead with something like “Probably kind of nervous, right?”]
Hollis: So imagine that you’re hurting enough that you’re willing to call a crisis hotline about what’s on your card. Is this how you’d feel? Nervous? What are you nervous about?”
Trainee A: You’re not going to respect me.
Trainee B: You’re going to think I’m stupid for being upset.
Trainee C: You’re going to laugh at me or not listen.
Trainee D: You’re going to tell me I have to do something about it even though I don’t want to.
Hollis: Yeah, exactly. You’ve got a lot of concerns about how I’m going to react–me, the hotline worker. So what do I need to do to put you at ease?
Trainees: [think for a while]. “Sound nice.” “Don’t rush into it.” “Let me talk, don’t push me.” “Don’t make me feel like my problems are the worst things you’ve ever heard.” “Be respectful.”
Hollis: Okay, good. So for this exercise, where I’m just reading your card, what do I need to do to sound respectful and nice?
Trainees: “Go slow but not too slow”. “Don’t use a lot of inflection”. “Yeah, but don’t talk in a monotone either.” “Try to sound kind.” “Don’t add anything except what’s on the card.”
Hollis: Okay, I think I can do that. What should you do, as listeners in the circle, to make sure everyone feels supported in the group?
Trainees: “Not make eye contact.” “Not try to figure out who goes with what card”. “We should look at the cards so we can’t see people’s handwriting.” “I don’t want people noticing when I’m blushing or crying”.
Hollis: Okay. How about keeping our eyes on the floor in the center of the circle. Does that work? [Trainees nod.] Can we all agree to stay in the circle until I’m done reading them all, and agree to keep the stories confidential within this group? [Trainees nod.] Okay. Remember to support your peers when you’re hearing their stories, and to notice how it feels when we’re hearing yours.
[I then take a card from the stack, read it slowly and without much inflection, pause after finishing, then deliberately tear the index card into pieces–at least three tears, with a slight pause between them.]
[Repeat this for all the cards in the stack, including my own. Small pause.]
Hollis: Thank you. [pause]. Thank you for doing that, and for trusting us. Before we go on, I just want to start with this: whichever story was yours, whichever thing you wrote, you’re welcome here.
Hollis: How are you feeling?
Trainees: “I’ve never told anyone that.” “Relieved.” “I forgot which one was mine.” “I feel better about it.” “I’m glad that’s over.”
Hollis: How did I do on reading the cards?
Trainees: “Great.” “I’m glad you didn’t do anything dramatic.” “It felt good.”
Hollis: How did we do at listening and supporting you?
Trainees: “Good.” “I was so aware of everyone else when it was my card!” “I got really fascinated by some of the stories.” “I never knew silence could be so helpful.”
Hollis: I hope you’ll remember these feelings throughout the weekend and throughout your time taking calls. Remember that the callers are taking a big risk sharing with us, and that they deserve our respect–and remember how good it feels to be heard.
Hollis: We’re going to take a 15 minute break now. We’ve got some snacks in the other room… everyone thumbs-up? [That’s our signal for “doing okay”. They give thumbs up.] Okay. I’ll stay in here for a bit in case anyone needs to talk. See you in 15 minutes!
In most groups, depending on how much people have to say at the end, Fears In A Hat takes between 15 and 40 minutes. I’ve had it take a full 60 minutes once, because we got into a really good discussion about what it felt like to share personal stories and I didn’t want to interrupt. In years of facilitating it, I’ve never seen this exercise flop.
Purpose
Fears In A Hat can have a lot of purposes, depending on your environment, your learners, and your facilitation style. Here are some of our purposes in using it.
Promote group formation at the beginning of a three-day training conference.
Create a shared experience to use as fodder in later workshops.
Give trainees with heavy stories a chance to share the burden with others and, by doing so, become more open to training.
Gauge the group’s composition: are their Fears similar or different? Are some really involved while others are simpler, or is it more homogeneous?
Build trust that, while we will ask them to do scary things in training, we will also always support them.
Get them out of their heads and into their emotions to prevent them from intellectualizing problems too much.
To encourage them to respect the work callers do in asking for help.
To remind them that we, as a group, are no different from our callers.
Materials/environment
Index cards (at least one per person)
Pens/pencils (one per person)
Hat or basket to use for collecting the index cards (optional)
Wastebasket for ripped cards
It’s important that all the chairs be in a circle for this exercise, including the presenter’s chair. The circle keeps people from sitting in the back or feeling like others are staring at them. If you’re using a hat, place it on the floor in the center of the circle.
It is absolutely critical that everyone in the room participate. We often have other hotline staff observing our trainings, and if there are observers in the room, I lead into the exercise by saying “I’d like everyone in the room to participate, so everyone feels safe. Would you be willing to come sit in the circle and write with us, or would you rather sit in the other room for a while?”.
The last time I did Fears In A Hat, our executive director walked in during the exercise to check on a detail for the next session. I paused the exercise, answered her question, and then explained that we were in the middle of Fears In A Hat and asked her to either take a card and write a fear or step out of the room. I think it’s important that these conversations be matter-of-fact and audible–because, in the eyes of the trainees, you’re defending their safety. Everyone in the room participates.
Key points
Most of these key points have to do with safety and challenge. We’re asking trainees to do something that’s a little frightening and perhaps a little dangerous–which is good, because it’s a challenge that will help them to grow. But we need to make sure that we assiduously guard their safety, too.
Confidentiality and respect. Make sure everyone understands the expectations: that this information stays within the group; that people’s responses are confidential; and that we are practicing listening respectfully, no matter what comes.
Everyone participates. No exceptions. I offer them the chance to make something up as a way to make sure everyone participates, although I strongly encourage people to try it with a real story. But if someone can’t even participate under those circumstances, ask them to leave the room until the exercise is over.
Allow escape valves. I usually invite people to sit, or stand, or sit on the floor, to make sure they’re comfortable. They need to stay with the group, but I often invite them to move around if they need to. I also try to let them know that we’ll have a break after the exercise, so they can pull themselves together if they need to.
Who touches the cards? I’m the only one who touches the cards once anyone has written on them. This is a safety piece.
No detective work. Ask for, and get, a commitment not to try to figure out which story belonged to each person. Again, this is a safety piece.
Guide their practice and attention. Early in training, people don’t necessarily think of listening as an activity that involves specific behaviors. Guide their attention to how they listen, and to how they feel, so they’ll have a chance to notice and then talk about them.
Give clear instructions. Clear handwriting, no name on the card, fold it once and put it in the hat.
Destroy the cards ritually. Rip them several times each, and do them right away instead of waiting until the end. Many participants have told me this is the most spiritually important moment of the entire first day of training.
Allow time for process. People may want to talk about their feelings. If you’re comfortable facilitating, you can leave this pretty open-ended; if not, or if you’re pressed for time, you can guide their reflections toward how it felt to listen, to be heard, to hear the cards being torn up, etc.
Wrap up
Listening is important for good hotline work. Most of us are here because we want to help callers, but lots of hotline folks came to the work because we felt that others didn’t listen to us. We have a pretty deep need to be heard, but we often feel that we shouldn’t need it, don’t deserve it, or won’t ever have a chance to tell our stories. Like the callers, we jump at the chance to tell our stories and feel supported. That’s part of why Fears In A Hat works so well: it’s satisfying a need in the learners while teaching them and giving them a chance to practice.
You can take the exercise in lots of directions. It works as an icebreaker, as a team building exercise later in training, as group formation, etc. As long as you commit to the open, respectful process and enforce the safety rules, it’s pretty much no-fail. You can use it again later in training to get trainees to notice what’s changed since they started learning to listen.
I encourage you to try it! If you have questions, please leave a comment asking them!
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy reading:
What if the woods were filled with digital natives? Millennial maples? Tweeting tupelos? Mobile mahogany? Do the digital birds Hangout in the cloud(s)? If a #tree falls in the digital forest, does it show up in anyone’s feed?
Twitter doesn’t show all your tweets to all of your followers.
On some level, this makes sense–the sheer volume of tweets would quickly overwhelm most feeds if they showed everything to everyone–but it was behavior that took both of us by surprise. If you’re used to expecting that all your tweets will show up for all of your followers, it’s confusing.
Basically, Twitter hides things it considers conversations–tweets that start with an @ symbol–from everyone except for users who follow both the sender AND the recipient. This means that if you’re having a public conversation but you click reply, you immediately cut out a lot of potential readers if you leave the @ at the beginning of the line.
What to do:
If you want your tweets to be visible to all your followers, don’t put an @reply at the beginning of the line.
hey @jaz_math I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [VISIBLE]
@jaz_math hey I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [INVISIBLE]
If you want an easy way to change this without getting away from clicking “reply”, just add a period or some other mark at the very beginning of the line.
hey @jaz_math I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [VISIBLE]
@jaz_math hey I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [INVISIBLE]
.@jaz_math hey I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [VISIBLE! YAY!]
,@jaz_math hey I found this cool blog post about the missing tweets [VISIBLE! YAY!]
Note that adding hashtags (#hollis, #MTBoS, etc.) doesn’t affect this; hashtags assist searching, and the @reply thing is about access control. Hashtags won’t give you access to a tweet that otherwise wouldn’t appear in your feed.
Details:
Twitter draws a distinction between “normal tweets”, “mentions”, “@replies”, and “direct messages”, and the position of the @symbol makes a big difference.
Normal tweets: any tweets that don’t fit the other categories.
Mentions: tweets that feature a reference to another @user as long as that reference isn’t at the start of the tweet.
@Replies: tweets that have a reference to another @user at the beginning of the tweet.
Direct messages: non-tweet messages sent directly to another user by clicking their name.
You can think of them as access categories that restrict the potential viewers who might see a given tweet. The farther down the ladder you go, the more restrictive the settings. The level of restriction depends on the position of the @ symbol.
Normal tweets (“blah blah blah”) appear in the feed of anyone who follows me.
Mentions (“blah blah @jaz_math”) notify @jaz_math and appear in the feed of anyone who follows me.
@Replies (“@jaz_math blah blah”) notify @jaz_math and appear in the feed of anyone who follows BOTH @jaz_math AND me. Note that this is NOT visible to my followers unless they also follow @jaz_math.
Direct messages (click DM, “blah blah blah”) appear only for the recipient and me.
A framework for thinking about it
Since I’m one of the people who mostly uses Twitter for professional things, I’ll put this into conference terms. Imagine that we’re at a conference workshop, sitting at one of several round tables in the room.
Normal tweets are like me standing up to make a comment during a conference workshop session. Anyone who’s in the room with me (my followers) can hear what I say (have it appear in their feed).
Mentions are like me standing up during a conference workshop session and saying “to respond to what Jasmine was saying, blah blah blah.” Anyone who’s in the room with me (my followers) can hear what I say (have it appear in their feed), and Jasmine also gets a notification saying that I’ve said something referencing her. This is, essentially, a public conversation.
@Replies are like table talk at a conference session: brief comments intended for a particular person but audible to those sitting right next to us. They’re not intended for a wider audience, so I only say them loud enough for Jasmine to get notified that I’m talking to her and for the people sitting at our same table (following both Jasmine and me) to hear me (have my tweet appear in their feeds).
Direct messages are like writing a message down on a piece of paper, folding it, and discreetly passing it to Jasmine. Nobody else has any idea that I’ve sent a message, nor do they know what it said.
Who cares?
I do. And newbies do. If you’re using Twitter to foster an open community, it’s frustrating and confusing for new people (like me, alas) when they can’t see the conversations that are happening due to a technicality. That’s what happens when you leave @replies at the front of the line: it cuts people out unless they’re already following both participants.
The sad part is that they’ll never know what they’re missing because Twitter won’t show them anything about it.
So: if you want your conversations to be open to new people and others, stick a period before the first @ symbol or move the @references later in the line.
If you want to restrict your conversation to a smaller audience, that’s totally fine! Use @replies right up at the front of the line, confident that you’ve got a smaller audience. But if you’re wanting to have a visible, public conversation, move the @references farther back in your tweets.
Thanks! Lots of people (the #MTBoS in particular) are sharing really cool professional conversation with Twitter, and I hope this will help keep it accessible to new people as well as established contributors.
Please feel free to link to this page and share it with others, or re-tweet the tweet shown below. Thanks to Jasmine (@jaz_math) for helping me (@adkpiper) figure this out!
The phone rings, and the caller is really upset. Sometimes angry, sometimes tearful, sometimes sullen, but whatever the direction, the emotions are off the charts. Often it feels as though nothing can help them–nothing you offer has any chance of making a difference. We try to focus on facts, resolve their complaints, de-escalate the situation, find out where we can help, but often it goes nowhere. Why?
Over the years, we’ve seen that callers need us to notice and support their feelings before they can tell us much about what caused the feelings–and that attempts to resolve their problems before addressing how they feel generally don’t work. If our goal is to help our customers feel better after working with us, we need a wider view than just straight problem-solving–because people need a chance to feel that their story has been heard, not just a chance to watch their problems disappear.
How crisis happens
Mike
This is Mike. He’s a regular guy, going about his regular life.
Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune
Sometimes, Mike’s life takes a turn for the worse. Bad things happen to him.
Actually, this is always happening. Life always shoots a few arrows at Mike, but he usually just plucks them out, sets them down, dusts himself off and keeps moving. Sort of the way most of us deal with mosquito bites: sure, they’re unpleasant, but they’re not that big a deal.
But once in a while, Life gets feisty and starts shooting lots of arrows, or maybe Mike gets accosted by a roving band of archers. It starts to feel like Life has some kind of vendetta against Mike, and he gets knocked down. Once he does, he becomes an easier target, and he’s quickly hit again and again. Mike is now in crisis because Life has overwhelmed his usual coping skills.
Mike’s on the ground, injured by Life
So Mike is lying on the ground stuck full of arrows like some horrifying porcupine from the battle of Agincourt. He’s in trouble, and the facts are bad: he’s got a whole lot of arrow wounds, he’s losing a lot of blood, and he’s vulnerable to further arrow wounds.
Because of those things (facts), Mike develops feelings. He’s in a lot of pain almost as soon as the first arrow hits him, and before long he’s scared, and he’s mistrustful because (let’s be honest) Life is shooting arrows at him!
Mike feels emotions because of the things that happened
It doesn’t take long before Mike starts feeling a lot more emotions: anger at the people shooting at him, anxiety over whether this is how Life is going to treat him from now on, worries over whether he’s going to be permanently disabled, and on and on.
Notice that the emotions take up a lot more space and bandwidth than the original injuries did. They’re huge and overwhelming. Also notice that they totally surround Mike at this point. The feelings grow out of the facts, but eventually they become somewhat independent–not just offshoots, but factors in their own right. Remember that the person’s grief closet may be overflowing.
I can help!
We show up on the scene, ready to help, like some kind of psychological EMT, a customer service black belt, a total expert in problem solving, a living tribute to the arts of brief solution-focused counseling. Mike has some problems and we are here to solve them!
Strangely, though, Mike doesn’t seem to want our help. It’s almost like he wants to stay injured, because we keep talking about the importance of getting him to a hospital, the possibility of investing in armor, maybe taking a different route to work, placating Life, whatever, but Mike keeps moaning and talking about how unfair it all is. Why can’t he just get with the program? We’ve got solutions for this stuff!
Start with the feelings
People need to feel that you’ve heard their story. They need to feel confident that you’ve understood how they’re feeling, not just that you’ve accurately assessed their problems. If there are solutions to be found, our callers need to believe not just that we’ve understood the problems and proposed correct solutions, but also that we understand how they’re feeling and care about it.
Until we’ve acknowledged their feelings, most callers aren’t ready to talk about solutions. This is true whether they’re calling a crisis hotline, talking to customer service at a big box store, asking to yell at a restaurant manager, or complaining to their Senator.
So let’s start with the feelings. Reach behind the content (as my friend Pat Morris once said) toward the person. Honor how customers feel before you start digging too deeply into what the problem is, what caused the problem, or how you might be able to solve it.
If you look at my drawing, you’ll see that it isn’t really possible to reach the arrow wounds without getting engulfed in the feelings, because the feelings surround everything. You have to start with the feelings because they’re the first thing you see. So start with the feelings!
Two examples
Here’s what that might look like in a crisis hotline context. The first call is based on standard problem-solving practice; the second call implements a start-with-the-feelings approach.
Problem-solving call
Me: Hi, crisis line, can I help you?
Caller: Uh… I hope so.
M: What’s going on tonight?
C: Well, I just got my electricity shut off tonight.
M: Okay, I can help with that. When was your last payment due?
C: Two weeks ago.
M: Okay, and is this the first time your electricity has been shut off?
C: No, it’s happened before because I lost my job a while ago, but then I got a new one and I thought it was going to be great, but not so much as it turns out.
M: Okay, so you’ve had a history of non-payment. Have you been in touch with National Grid to see about setting up a payment plan?
C: No… I didn’t know I could do that.
M: Yep! If you’d like, I can get you their number–they’re still open for another two hours and you can probably reach them tonight. Often they’ll turn your power back on as long as you set up a plan where you’re paying them something each month–it’s not in their best interests to lose you as a customer.
C: … okay. Yeah, can I have that number?
M: Sure! It’s [number]. Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?
C: … no. Thanks, you’ve been really helpful.
M: Thank you! Please feel free to call back if there’s anything else you need.
This is decent work for what’s basically an information and referral (I&R) call. We hear about a problem, we ask a bunch of clarifying questions, and we provide meaningful referrals that have a genuine chance of helping with the caller’s situation. It’s straightforward and fairly quick, and the customer sounds satisfied.
My concern is that we can do better. The referral is good, but we have more to offer to this caller, to turn good service into great service.
Start-with-the-feelings call
Me: Hi, crisis line, can I help you?
Caller: Uh… I hope so.
M: What’s going on tonight?
C: Well, I just got my electricity shut off tonight.
M: I’m sorry to hear that–what happened?
C: Well, I was two weeks late on my payment again, and the same thing happened a few months ago so I guess they just gave up on me.
M: Sounds like you’re feeling pretty bad about that.
C: Yeah. I mean, I know it’s important to pay on time, I get that, it’s just that I’ve been dealing with a lot and I… I just lost track of it.
M: Sounds like you’re feeling pretty overwhelmed. What else is going on?
C: My kid’s been in the ER a lot. Nothing serious, just ear infections, but I haven’t gotten much sleep because I’ve been worrying or sitting in the ER most nights. I get home at like 3am and then I hope to God I get a little sleep before I have to be at work the next day, and it’s just like there’s no time.
M: I’m so sorry–that’s a lot to manage!
C: Yeah, so… I dunno, I know there’s probably stuff I can do about the power but I just feel so overwhelmed by it.
M: I’ve got some ideas about that, if you’d like them.
C: That would be great.
M: Have you been in touch with National Grid to see about setting up a payment plan?
C: No… What’s that?
M: Basically, they want to keep you as a customer, so they’ll often turn your power back on as long as you set up a plan where you’re paying them something each month. They’re usually pretty understanding about it when it’s based on things like a sick kid.
C: Okay, that sounds great. Can I have that number?
M: Yep! They’re still open for another two hours and you can probably reach them tonight. While I’m looking that up, how are you feeling right now? Any different from when you called?
C: Yeah… I feel like I can do this, like it’s not going to be as awful as I thought.
M: I’m so glad! That number is [number]. Would you like to talk more with me, or would you rather call them right away?
C: I think I’d like to just call them, but thank you so much for listening.
M: You’re so welcome! Please feel free to call back if there’s anything else you need.
In many respects, this is the same call, but I hope you’ll see that the quality of the interaction is greatly changed. It takes a little longer, yes, but it’s better in pretty much every respect except for the metrics related to call times and calls per hour per agent. In this case, we led to the same outcome as in the first call, but we also have enough information that we could offer additional referrals if the caller wanted them.
Ways to start with the feelings
Say out loud some of the things you notice about the caller:
“Sounds like you’re having a hard time”
“I hear that you’re really angry”
“I can tell that you’re upset”
“Sounds frightening”
“Feeling lonely?”
Connect with or repeat things you’ve heard them say:
“You’re really struggling, aren’t you?”
“That’s a lot to handle”
“I would be angry too”
Invite them to talk about feelings:
“How are you feeling about that?”
“What’s hardest about that?”
“Sounds like you have a lot on your plate. How are you managing with it?”
“I’d like to check in–how are you doing?”
“I hear that you’re struggling. How bad is it?”
Or just give people room to lead you toward feelings if they choose:
“Sounds like there’s a lot going on. Where would you like to start?”
“I want to give you room to talk, and I also have some ideas. Will you let me know if you’d like to hear them later on?”
“I’m glad you called today. What made you decide to pick up the phone?”
In closing
When we’re looking in from outside at the people we help, the first thing we reach is feelings. They surround the facts, shrouding and hiding them. If we skip the feelings and dive straight into the facts of the matter, at best we miss an opportunity to transform adequate service into excellence. At worst, we miss the point. If we focus on the facts, it becomes clear that the facts are the most important thing to us–sometimes more important than the caller.
Start with the feelings and you make it clear that the relationship–your rapport–is what matters most to you. Once you’ve established that, the callers will usually lead you toward what they need to talk about.
This is part of a series of posts musing on what goes into good customer service and support in a crisis hotline, good caller care, and the underpinnings of excellence in call centers. I like to think about stuff, and I hope you’ll join in. I also enjoy drawing pictures on index cards–try it! Thanks to Shye Louis for reminding me overtly that crisis center work is customer service (“Give ’em the pickle!”) and to Pat Morris for the idea of reaching behind the content. And thanks to you for not laughing too hard at my drawings.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy reading:
How do you integrate starting with the feelings in your work? Leave a comment or a question, please! I’d especially love to hear from people who don’t work in crisis hotlines. Where else does this apply? Leave a comment!
At NASCOD 2013, lots of us shared our recommendations for reading/watching/ruminating. It occurred to me that we could use an ongoing public resource that collects and curates things hotline directors find valuable; here’s my effort in that direction.
I will update this page as people send in more ideas; please leave a comment if you have suggestions! It’s my intention for this to become a “greatest hits” kind of document, not merely a collection of titles having something to do with a topic. Think of the books you’d say “you’ve GOT to read this!” to a colleague at a conference. Let’s make this a collection of really great resources!
I encourage you to buy these books from your local independent bookstore–let’s help keep them alive! For those without good local stores, I’ve included links to Amazon. If you buy books after clicking my link, I’ll get paid a little bit.
Avoiding Burnout and Learning to Thrive
Daring Greatly (book) by Brené Brown. Learning to welcome vulnerability and dare great things. (from Jennifer Battle).
The Four Agreements (book) by Don Miguel Ruiz. Presents a framework for changing how we live in the world for greater happiness, success, and trust. (from Hollis Easter).
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (book) by Carol Dweck. Cultivating a growth mindset vs. sticking with a fixed mindset can make a big difference. (from Jasmine Walker).
Positivity (book) by Barbara Fredrickson. Research on the effect of positive psychology, with many tools for integrating it into daily life. (from Hollis Easter).
Ten Zen Seconds (book) by Eric Maisel. Short mindfulness exercises (< 1 minute) to relieve stress and recover equilibrium. (from Hollis Easter).
Why Good Things Happen to Good People (book) by Stephen Post. Neuroscience that backs up the simple idea that doing good and being good is good for your health: physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual health. (from Meryl Cassidy).
Crucial Accountability (book) by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Guide to thinking about accountability and integrating it in a deep way. (from Karen Butler Easter).
The Lean Startup (book and audiobook) by Eric Ries. Really excellent thoughts about how we build new programs, assess what we’re learning, and make organizational change. It’s a book about entrepreneurship that applies well to hotline work. (from Hollis Easter).
Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies (book) by Michelle Pacansky-Brock. Practical examples of using low-cost and free technologies in training, with attention to generational preferences. (from Hollis Easter).
Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success (book) by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Avoid the “willpower trap” and look at what makes changes stick–and what prevents them from lasting. (from Hollis Easter).
Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design (books) by Garr Reynolds. Deliver better presentations by simplifying your materials and making them visually appealing. (from Hollis Easter).
Training Ain’t Performance (book) by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps. Fantastic introduction to the field of performance improvement, with lots of tools. See also Telling Ain’t Training(from Hollis Easter).
Want to help? Please leave a comment on this post saying what you’d like to add, and why. You’ll make my life even easier if you write it this way:
Title Words (format) by Author’s Name. One or two sentences describing the resource and why it’s valuable. Include a second sentence if you need it. (from Your Name).
(book) by Brené Brown. Learning to welcome vulnerability and dare great things. (from Jennifer Battle).
(book) by Don Miguel Ruiz. Presents a framework for changing how we live in the world for greater happiness, success, and trust. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Carol Dweck. Cultivating a growth mindset vs. sticking with a fixed mindset can make a big difference. (from Jasmine Walker).
(book) by Barbara Fredrickson. Research on the effect of positive psychology, with many tools for integrating it into daily life. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Eric Maisel. Short mindfulness exercises (< 1 minute) to relieve stress and recover equilibrium. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk. Wise thoughts about taking care of ourselves and each other while helping hotline callers. (from Karen Butler Easter).
(book) by Stephen Post. Neuroscience that backs up the simple idea that doing good and being good is good for your health: physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual health. (from Meryl Cassidy).
(book) by Marilee Adams. Learn to ask better questions and empower people. (from Jennifer Battle).
(book) by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Guide to thinking about accountability and integrating it in a deep way. (from Karen Butler Easter).
(book) by Daniel Pink. Looks at motivation from various angles and talks about how we can support it. Also available as a 
(book) by David Allen. A structured approach for managing time that leads to task focus and simple but effective procedures. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Barbara Burke. Lessons for improving outcomes and strengthening relationships, presented as a series of parables. (from Jennifer Battle).
(book) by Susan Cain. A look at the strengths of introverts and ways to support them in a world that mostly values extroverted behaviors. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Wayne A. Label. A great introduction to accounting, financial practices, and reporting. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Peri Pakroo. A NOLO Press book on what’s needed for 
(book) by Dan Roam. Introduction to thinking visually and using drawing to frame and solve problems. Does not require artistic ability! (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Michelle Pacansky-Brock. Practical examples of using low-cost and free technologies in training, with attention to generational preferences. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) and 
(book), by Atul Gawande. Excellent books on performance and performance support tools, with strong parallels for crisis centers. (from Bart Andrews and Hollis Easter).
(book) by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. Avoid the “willpower trap” and look at what makes changes stick–and what prevents them from lasting. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Chip & Allen Heath. Pop psychology/education book on what makes things memorable for humans, and how we can use that. (from Hollis Easter).
and 
(books) by Garr Reynolds. Deliver better presentations by simplifying your materials and making them visually appealing. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by George Piskurich. Iterative instructional design, with lots of tools included to make it easier. (from Hollis Easter).
(book) by Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps. Fantastic introduction to the field of performance improvement, with lots of tools. See also 
(from Hollis Easter).